Strangely enough, only the night before, we’d watched a TV programme about Fallow deer in the rutting season (now) and when I saw him crossing the road towards where I was standing, I knew he would be a trifle distracted – possibly a bit feisty and not too timid. And fortunately, the dog was safe in the car just then (stags are more than usually sensitive about wolf-like creatures during the rut), as I had just stopped by the road to try and get a few Autumn colour photos. the sun went behind a cloud and this magnificent fellow came out : )

View from the churchyard

What I found inside the church

I have to say, after getting my very own wildlife show of the Fallow deer stag, it seemed as though I might just as well go home and dribble goofily over the photos but the countryside was so lovely and Farnborough church so inviting that I decided to be greedy instead and look for more wonders. It was worth it. That window was such a discovery! Somehow incorporating a modern vision with the genuine feel of ancient glass window art. I will have to go back and find out more about the church. (At the time I just wandered around, open mouthed and snapping away dementedly, occasionally saying Oh Look!!!! and completely forgetting to check out the artist*, the name of the church* – anything really : )

And later, a buzzard, glimpsed through the hedge

Even more to come

: )

*Update: I had a look for the church online. It’s The Church of All Saints in Farnborough, Berkshire, (the highest village in the Berkshire Downs). John Betjeman lived in the Old Rectory for a time and the window was a memorial to him, made by his friend, the artist, John Piper. I think I might get hooked on visiting churches with his windows in them!

Picasa is being very busy ‘updating thumbnails’ all by itself. Usually it doesn’t do that unless I edit or add some photos. Odd. Mind it did say it was ‘compacting the database’ last night. It’s much tidier than me. I need to ‘compact the washing base’ and the ‘dining room base’ and come to think of it I ought to ‘update’ the toenails and the winter woollies bases too!

Barney’s promised/threatened absence of two weeks has been severely adjusted during the second of the weeks. One day he had to come home because he needed materials. Another day he had to come home for a funeral. Now he’s needing to extend the two weeks into a third but doesn’t expect it to be more than one extra night. I rather suspect that he’ll be back the first night all the same.

Of course it’s nice to see him unexpectedly three nights instead of none.

However, it does mean that instead of a long period of hugely reduced responsibilities and deadlines (dinner, shopping, dinner, washing, dinner etc etc) I get a mish mash* of total freedom interspersed with sudden urgencies. This isn’t what I was planning for. And the weather isn’t obliging with sunshine on the free days and rain on the busy ones. It’s doing its usual thing of producing wonderful sunny, rainwashed evenings just as I’m setting off to do some urgent dinner shopping or on my way to some other deadline.

During the first week, though, I did manage to achieve a major house improvement. We get a huge draught through the gaps in the back door and as I have said before (every winter in fact) it means your feet get cut off on windy evenings. So we decided to hang a curtain in front of the door. And last week I did it! (Barney put the rail up – I’m not very good with drills and rawl plugs and ladders and he is, so that’s fair enough). We now have a curtained back door.

The cats occasionally get lost in there (it won’t work as a draught excluder unless there’s no gap between the curtains so they’re well pulled across each other in the middle) so I sometimes find a cat in between the door and the curtain, looking a bit sheepish. The dog simply can’t work out where the back door has GONE! He can smell the outside world (through the mothball smell of the curtains – I didn’t make them I’m afraid, I just scoured the charity shops till I found an acceptable pair that would fit) and he keeps sniffing around with his ever hopeful, slightly puzzled expression: Is it under here? Up there? Round this corner? What has she done with it???? Maybe it’s hanging up with my lead?

It’s hard being a dog.

And then, just to prove me wrong, I got the most wonderfully rewarding day with only a very nice deadline at the end of it and what’s more, I decided to take the dog with me so he got to find the outside world too.

West Ilsley and a gleam of sunshine

Farnborough Church

Monarch of the Downs? Could anything be more wonderful?

Well, yes!

How about that : ) There’s more but it’ll have to wait till I’ve played with some more photos. Suffice it to say, me and the dog came home, two very happy bunnies : )

*Come now, spell check, everyone knows mish mash is a word. I mean both the words are words**

**Oh! I apologise to spellcheck – it thinks mishmash is a word. It could be right at that.

About

Time for a change?

I take a lot of photos. I eat and drink a little (just a little) too much, read fast, play a violin slowly, love my kids, husband, cat, home, the English landscape, most other landscapes, music, the changing seasons, sparkle and texture and colour, my friends, my computer, my car ~ my life really. What more do you need?

I don’t sleep enough and I’m always late.
Well you can’t have everything.

Oh, and WP tells me you may occasionally see some advertisements here. I apologise if you do – they charge to have them blocked so I’m letting them be.